MSU hosts April 10 Orser lecture on innovation and social impact

March 28, 2014 -- MSU News Service

Ashley Jablow with OpenIDEO, an online, collaborative platform where people work together to solve big challenges for the social good, will present "Creativity, Design Thinking, and the Crowd: Harnessing the Power of Open Innovation to Create Social Impact" on Thursday, April 10, from 4:10-5 p.m. in the Procrastinator Theater on the Montana State University campus. Photo courtesy of Ashley Jablow. High-Res Available

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Ashley Jablow with OpenIDEO, an online, collaborative platform where people work together to solve big challenges for the social good, will present "Creativity, Design Thinking, and the Crowd: Harnessing the Power of Open Innovation to Create Social Impact" on Thursday, April 10, from 4:10-5 p.m. in the Procrastinator Theater on the Montana State University campus. The lecture is part of the MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship’s David Orser Executive Speakers Forum and is free and open to the public.

Jablow, who serves as a liaison between OpenIDEO’s online community and its sponsors and partners, is expected to discuss how OpenIDEO was created and what makes its global community of 60,000 members uniquely positioned to change the world. She will also speak about what OpenIDEO’s community has achieved so far, the lessons the team has learned and how the community’s open innovation approach is changing the way people collaborate.

Since 2010, OpenIDEO has run more than 20 design challenges for social and environmental impact, with topics ranging from improving maternal health in the developing world using mobile technology to revitalizing cities in decline. Every challenge starts with a big question posed by OpenIDEO and the challenge sponsor. Then, OpenIDEO’s global community and other networks of experts, leaders and practitioners join together online to research the challenge topic and collaboratively brainstorm, refine and evaluate the best ideas. After a challenge ends, all ideas are available for anyone – from the challenge sponsor to an individual community member – to test out, build upon and implement.

Jablow joined IDEO in 2011 as community manager. Now, as a liaison between OpenIDEO's online community and its international network of sponsors and partners, she collaborates with clients to understand their innovation goals and craft a strategy to achieve them. She also works with teams of community managers, designers and developers to support the community as it works to design ideas that will have real impacts. In addition, Jablow works with teachers and students to explore the role that OpenIDEO plays in education.

Jablow previously served as director of development at The BizWorld Foundation, an international organization teaching children about entrepreneurship and financial literacy. She was also senior development associate at the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, where she fundraised on behalf of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University.

She has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and Spanish from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in marketing and corporate responsibility from Boston University.

The MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship's David Orser Executive Speakers Forum is named for David B. Orser, a 1966 MSU graduate who started funding the program in 1988 in order to inspire MSU business students to pursue careers as innovative, responsible and ethical business leaders. For more information about the forum, contact Audrey Capp at (406) 994-7026 or audrey.lee@montana.edu.